Emancipation of Catholics

There is a stone in Birr which is traditionally said to mark the centre of Ireland. It was missing for over 100 years and was only restored in the latter part of the 1900s. When not in Birr, it was at Cullane House, between Tulla and Kilkishen. Daniel O’Connell used Cullane as his base for the 1828 Clare Election. Tom Steele, a major supporter of O’Connell, felt that wherever O’Connell was, was really the centre of Ireland, so he went to Birr, took the stone and had it installed at Cullane. The Birr Historical Society eventually came and took it back.
In the 1820s, O’Connell was indeed the centre of Ireland for many people. He came to prominence in opposition to the Act of Union and then began campaigning for Catholic Emancipation. This measure had been promised when the Union was passed but it never came to pass.
The king refused to accept the idea of emancipation and both Pitt and Castlereagh resigned from the Government in protest. In 1823, O’Connell founded the Catholic Association, which aimed to use legal and peaceful means to achieve emancipation. People all over the country flocked to join and the association was funded by each member paying one penny per month, which became known as the Catholic Rent. There was support for the idea in the House of Commons but both the Lords and the king were opposed.
Catholics with freeholds of more than 40 shillings had been given the vote, so O’Connell decided that they should be organised and only support candidates who were committed to emancipation. In 1826, their favoured candidates were elected in Louth and Waterford.
The Catholic Association decided to go the next step and try to elect a Catholic as MP in order to provoke a parliamentary crisis and force the government’s hand. When an election arose in Clare, O’Connell himself was proposed as a candidate, even though his opponent, Vesey Fitzgerald, was a supporter of emancipation. The Catholic freeholders of the country were mobilised by their local clergy and marched to Ennis to vote. O’Connell was easily elected.
The government was forced to act and in April 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed. Catholics could now sit in Parliament but were excluded from some public offices or from being monarch. Indeed, to this day, the monarch is not allowed to marry a Catholic. One drawback was the fact that the freeholder qualification was raised from 40 shillings to £10 and this excluded most of the poorer peasants.
O’Connell was still not eligible to sit in the Commons because he was elected before the Act was passed and the king refused to consent to him taking his seat until he had been elected again. Another Clare election was held in 1829 and following his second election, O’Connell became the first Catholic to take his seat in the House of Commons since the time of the Reformation.
His opponent won a seat in England and later in 1831 was elected in Ennis. He went on to become a member of the House of Lords and later a trustee of the British Museum. O’Connell’s first election, which forced the government to introduce Catholic Emancipation was held on July 5, 1828 – 182 years ago this week.
n Michael Torpey